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Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Time keeps on chugging along here at the Reed house and here is a recap of our wonderful 2014. We have lived here in Pflugerville (just outside of Austin) for just over a year now and love it. We live in a great neighborhood with lots of kids that come and go from our house on a regular basis or my kids to their houses.

Some of the kids out playing right out our front door - Boys on scooters an Cat is the peanut running around

We got to go on a couple of family trips this year. The summer we went to Colorado and stayed at my parents Cabin and had some wonderful adventures including a Gold Mine tour, hiking to waterfalls, a wildlife park, miniture golf, fishing, Indian dance Ceremonies, and enjoying getting out of the heat for a bit.

Our second family trip was to Great Wolf Lodge. The kids had a blast in the indoor waterpark, Magi Quest, and arcade. We took them there to celebrate the boy's birthdays and also as our Christmas present to the kids and the family instead of presents this year.

The kids and I took short trips to see my parents and Mike's parents during the summer to get some swimming in and also a quick day trip to Galveston to visit the beach.

Mike still has his same job and only has to commute to work 23 minutes each way. He accomplished a couple of huge races this year, the Austin Half marathon and the Pflugerville Triathlon, go Mike!! He has been busy helping Morgan in cub scouts being the Den leader and helping juggle soccer games. Mike has also been hard a work in our backyard getting our little garden up and going. We have been growing potatoes, corn, green beans, squash, eggplant, carrots, various herbs, bell peppers, jalapenos, lettuces, kale, cabbage, watermelon, tomatoes, onions, garlic, broccoli, and snap peas. We have also just put in blueberries, a lime tree, and blackberries. He has built numerous planters, re-landscaped the front and back yard, and is currently working on our "orchard" where were are going to put in pears, apples, peaches, and maybe a lemon tree.

Before the planters

Our new planters

Morgan is about to turn 9 years old. He is in grade 3 and has wonderful grades, but his social behavior is to be desired, but he is working on it!! He got to play soccer in the spring and fall and got pretty good at defense!! He is now a Bear Cub in cut scouts with daddy being his den leader. In scouts he has gone on camping trips, trail hikes, lake cleanups, pinewood derby trials, pack meetings, and den meetings. He loves it and always is looking forward to the next event. He recently earn the privilege of using a pocket knife to whittle soap into shapes, so we always have wonderful soap shapes in our guest bathroom!! His favorite things right now are still Star Wars, How to Train your Dragon, Minecraft, anything Lego, and computers.

Brandon is about to turn 5!! He has been attending a pre-school on Tuesday and Thursday and loves it. He come home asking questions about letters, words, and loves to draw pictures for me. He keeps asking when he can got o Morgan's school, I think he is really excited about Kindergarten! He follows everything Morgan does including playing computer games, Minecraft, Legos, and picking on his big brother. Brandon also played soccer this year and he his really good, scoring multiple goals every game!!

Catherine turned 2 this past August and is also attending the same pre-school as Brandon on Tues and Thurs. She loves to get her backpack ready for school, help pack her lunch, and seems upset when I tell her today his not a school day. She loves to play with her babies and look pretty by wearing dresses, putting bows in her hair, wear nail polish. Somehow I got a girly girl on my hands. Her new favorite thing, along with everyone other little girl around, is Frozen. She sings the songs, loves the dolls, and asks to watch "Let It Go" AKA the movie Frozen all the time.

I stay home and run the house. Keeping after the kid's activities, school, homework, cooking, cleaning, appointments, and day to day life keeps me on my toes. I have joined a Mommy group and have met a bunch of wonderful moms and kids, I am even part of the board to help with new members!! I still enjoy my hobby and budding career as a crafting designer. I design for some major companies and have some new ones coming in the new year, I am still tickled pink that I get paid to do my hobby!! I have been doing some demos at a local craft store, making scrapbook pages for a client, going to fun crop nights with a great new group, and enjoying being able to have a great hobby that pays me!! My big news for the year is that I bought my first new car, I am officially a minivan mom!

Along the bottom of the page and also as the banner at the top I used the wonderful Flame Glitter swirl, the pops of the glitter stars of just wonderful. I used the Christmas Words Glitter paper for the title and also sections of the plaid in the cluster in the top left corner. I also used a little strip of backside of the Vanilla Fleur Glitter Cardstock (it has these wonderful stripes along the bottom of the entire project) and then added in the Gold Dew Drops. I used the backside of the White Pinetree Cardstock, it has this wonderful green swirly patterned that fit wonderfully with the page, you can see section of it in the picture above.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

For Christmas this year we decided to give a trip for our kids and not gifts, so to reveal this fun present to our kids we had them each open 3 presents (the cards below) with clues of where we were going, so 9 clues total were opened at an early Christmas present opening with my parents. On each card I wrote a portion of a sentence giving a clue of where we were going. It reads, "For this Christmas our present to all of you is to spend our time together having fun and lots of cheer. So bring your magic and your swim suits for we are going to a very special place full of lots of wonder and joy."

On the back side of the cards were numbers stating which row the card was in (to make it a bit easier) and a letter or two that they had to arrange to spell the words "Great Wolf Lodge". The screams of excitement were deafening as they figured out where we were going.

I used the wonderful December Birds of a Feather Kit to create this set of puzzle cards. The cards each measure 4 x 4 inches, so once together it creates a 12 x 12 page. The colors of the papers and the cute diecuts from the kit were just perfect for this little project!!

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

I made this card using the wonderful Little Girl Paper pad
and Little Princess 3D Stickers from Paper House.My 2 year old daughter just loved this paper pad calling it her “pretty
book”.She would sit down with it in my
scrap room and “read” it telling me she sees castles, cupcakes, kitties, horse,
and so on.It was just too cute that I
know I had to do something super cute with the paper pad.The pages the book measure 6x6, so it is just
perfect for cards!!We have a little
girl birthday coming up, and so we made a special card for the birthday girl.

I used
several sheets from the Little Girl Pad to create the front, inside, and back
of the card - 6 sheets total.

I had made the card, front, back, and insides when my
daughter came up to me and asked “where is pretty?” – translation where is the
sparkle!?!?!So with my daughter in mind
and to make it “pretty” I added lots of sparkle!

Here are the directions for creating this card

1) I used white cardstock for the base – the front
of the card measuring 6.5 x 5 inches.
2) Cut out 4 sections from the paper pad measuring
6.5 x 5 inches to cover all 4 sides of the card – I used all the non pictures
papers for this from the pack (teal, pink, purple, etc).

3) I then picked out 2 large graphic images (the
castle and unicorn) for the front and back of the card measuring 6 x 4.5 inches.

Alexa

FTC Notice:

I am blessed to work in an industry I love. As a project designer and instructor I am often given products to work with. Some of the products I work with have been given to me by companies I design for or sold to me at a discounted rate. While this in no way controls my content (I only use and blog what I love) the government says I have to tell you that I might have gotten some things for free.

About Me

I am a mother of 4 children (2 boys and 2 girls). I have been scrapping since 2007, mostly to scrap my oldest child's baby book and it took off from there. I love to create and to find new ideas.
erinkreed@gmail.com